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[He shakes his head in very nearly utter disbelief.] WHERE in the name of Beefeater, Tanqueray, and Gordon's Gin do the Brits manage to find such total, atavistic, condescending Neanderthals as this particular sample?

Oh, and BTW, Pete: the moon didn't always perfectly occlude the sun in eclipse, and the time will come when its orbit extends to the point where it will fully obscure the sun rather than eclipse it. The world around us changes. What a pity your belief system fails to observe that.

What a sport! And Christians get on their knees to perform ritualistic cannabalism of a Jewish zombie (real cannabalism if you're Catholic). After after receiving the love of JC, let's all go out and hate, hate, hate. Pete apparently is a one man cheerleader for the Society for the Promotion of Fear Based Bigotry. Meetings are on Sunday, after services. Tea and scones provided by the ladies auxiliary.

Any chance there's a link between these type attitudes and the approaching near shutout of religion in Europe? If there is nobody taking you seriously, be as big an "arse" as you like. It really makes no difference. You'll appeal to those contrarians who respect nothing more than the voice in the wilderness. Nothing proves a point more than having detractors in every corner to those who seek out conspiracies.

I've often wondered if the human capacity to not only recognize patterns, but to interpret patterns where none exist, is behind much of spirituality and early religion. One thing seems to escape these types- if there were no patterns in the universe, it wouldn't work very well now would it? In fact, it probably wouldn't work at all. That's not in and of itself proof there is no designer, just something to contemplate before making some idiotic statement where you tell the rest of us how you personally understand the nature of reality (and that we don't).

The shame is that very similar attitudes are espoused by the likes of Pat Robertson, John Hagee, the late Jerry Falwell, and a host of others here in the United States. Up until recently, their statements have seen little appreciable effect on the religiosity of the US, though I wonder if their thoughtless blathering can be counted as a factor in the recent noted decrease in the population of protestants here, as well as the marked increase in, if not atheists and agnostics, then the "nots," those with no formal religious affiliation.

It'd be nice if we were finally catching up with Western Europe in this regard.